How Long Is “The Music Lovers”?

Produced and directed by Ken Russell, the life of Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky is freely interpreted in this screen biography that places emphasis on the more painful and perverse aspects of the famed composer's life and oddities in the lives of the Russian aristocracy of the period. Andre Previn and the London Symphony Orchestra perform Tchaikovsky's music. This film has much in common with others by Mr. Russell, including highly exaggerated acting, vivid imagery and considerable attention to the more bizarre aspects of Tschaikovsky's life. For instance, in one scene the boy Tchaikovsky sees his mother, who is disfigured by the final stages of cholera, being given a bath of scalding water (a common treatment of the period). Richard Chamberlain and Vera Miles play the composer and his wife.